Coverage.py’s behavior can be extended with third-party plug-ins. A plug-in is
a separately installed Python class that you register in your .coveragerc.
Plugins can alter a number of aspects of coverage.py’s behavior, including
implementing coverage measurement for non-Python files.

Information about using plug-ins is on this page. To write a plug-in, see
Plug-in classes.

To use a coverage.py plug-in, you install it and configure it. For this
example, let’s say there’s a Python package called something that provides
a coverage.py plug-in called something.plugin.

Install the plug-in’s package as you would any other Python package:

pipinstallsomething

Configure coverage.py to use the plug-in. You do this by editing (or
creating) your .coveragerc file, as described in Configuration files. The
plugins setting indicates your plug-in. It’s a list of importable
module names of plug-ins:

[run]plugins=something.plugin

If the plug-in needs its own configuration, you can add those settings in
the .coveragerc file in a section named for the plug-in:

[something.plugin]option1=Trueoption2=abc.foo

Check the documentation for the plug-in for details on the options it takes.

Run your tests with coverage.py as you usually would. If you get a message
like “Plugin file tracers (something.plugin) aren’t supported with
PyTracer,” then you don’t have the C extension
installed. The C extension is needed for certain plug-ins.